Connected
Lewis tells Vallejo why it’s necessary to have this food pantry in his middle school.
To all of us former middle school miscreants who work on this magazine, the mere act of surviving life as a middle school principal seems no small feat — to nail the task so completely that you win the title of national middle school principal of the year? Well, we knew we needed to talk with Damon Lewis ’95 (CLAS), English education alum, former captain of the 1994–95 Huskies football team, and the best middle school principal in the country. We knew, too, that there could be no one better to interrogate Lewis about his origin story and middle school magic than our former magazine student worker Camila Vallejo ’19 (CLAS), who’s been winning journalism awards for her stories covering inequity in urban housing since she graduated with degrees in journalism and communications.
What we didn’t know until we called to offer her the assignment was that Lewis’ current Ponus Ridge STEAM Academy had once been Vallejo’s Ponus Ridge Middle School — in her hometown of Norwalk, Connecticut. Serendipity. Our hope was to have Vallejo and Peter Morenus, magazine photographer, spend a full day shadowing Lewis on the job, and hoped his Husky love would help make that happen. This could only sweeten the deal.
Sure enough, Lewis was all in: “I would love to be interviewed by a former Ponus student!” He spent sunup to sundown with our team and revealed to Vallejo more about what drives him than we could have hoped. Turns out, Lewis is one of those human beings we all wish our children could have in their lives. Spend a day with him — and 600 middle school students — by reading The Principal Formerly Known as DLew.
